To Darkness and to Death (23 page)

Van der Hoeven straightened. Dug a long iron key out of his pocket. Sprang for the door. The door with the decorative lock that must, Shaun realized, be fully functional. The bastard was going to lock him in.

It had been over thirty years, but by God he still remembered how to tackle. Eugene went down, half in and half out of the doorway. The key thunked on wood somewhere beyond his head, but as soon as Shaun loosened his hold to climb off the floor, van der Hoeven kicked him in the face. Shaun howled, clutching at his nose, blood spurting from between his fingers. Eugene was all over him, punching, clawing, shrieking, “Leave her alone! I’m protecting her! Leave her alone!”

Roaring, Shaun surged to his feet, using his weight to slam van der Hoeven backward. “Give me the goddam key!” he snarled.

Van der Hoeven rolled, faster than Shaun would have thought possible, his hand closing over the key. He continued to roll, evading Shaun’s lunge, scrambling to his feet. He kicked up, like a kid playing soccer, and connected with Shaun’s breastbone. His air rushed out so fast Shaun thought a lung was collapsing, and his heart—he clutched at his chest. Jesus Christ, was he having a heart attack?

“I told you to leave!” Eugene rushed him. Shaun, still flailing and airless, feebly warded off the blow. “I told you!” He slammed into Shaun again, sending him tottering through the open door.

Shaun tried to demand van der Hoeven let the girl go, but he was wheezing so hard, what emerged was “Let… girl…” and a series of gasps.

“She’s here for her own protection,” Eugene said, and his hand closed over the edge of the door, and Shaun saw what was going to happen, saw himself imprisoned by this lunatic, this fucking rich man’s son who hid out in the woods so no one knew he had gone insane, and his rage and fear filled him up until it stretched his skin and then even the bounds of his body couldn’t hold it back and he was surging, up, forward, plowing into van der Hoeven with all the force his seventeen-year-old self had used plowing into a row of defensive linebackers and the key arched out of van der Hoeven’s hand and Shaun roared and they thudded against something hard and unyielding and van der Hoeven tilted—

—and there was a moment, before gravity caught him, his eyes wild with fear, looking at Shaun, begging him, begging him—

Shaun slammed forward. Eugene fell over the gallery rail, screaming, screaming until there was a wet thud and the scream cut short.

1:15 P.M.

Shaun stared at the unmoving figure that used to be Eugene van der Hoeven. There was noise around him: the rattle and rustle of the wind in the November trees, the cawing of crows, a rhythmic muffled whine behind him. But he was staring down into a well of silence, into a place where noise and movement and life were swallowed and went still.

He stared and stared, waiting for an arm to twitch, for a chest to heave upward, knowing as he did so that it wasn’t going to happen. The rhythmic noise wormed its way into his frozen brain, first as a whine, then as an annoyance, and then, as his brain unfroze and the living world closed over the well, as a fear.

He whirled. The blonde in the room had squirmed across the floor and was inching her way into a standing position against the far wall. She met his eyes, and he could see she was terrified.

“It’s okay,” he said, approaching her. She shrank against the wall in a way that made him feel like a loathsome worm. “Really. It’s okay. He can’t hurt you.” He reached for her duct-tape gag. She flinched away, her eyes flooding with tears. “I’m going to take this off. I’m sorry, but it’s going to hurt.” He pried off a tiny edge while she stood, trembling, and then yanked as hard as he could.

She made a noise he would never forget as long as he lived—half scream, half wail. “You killed my brother,” she said, her heart breaking in her voice. “You killed my brother. I saw you.”

Shaun stood there, the duct tape dangling stupidly from his fingers, while the young woman sobbed. “Your… brother.”

She nodded.

“You’re Millie van der Hoeven?”

She nodded.

He was utterly lost. What was going on? Were they into some sick bondage fantasy? “What the hell was he doing with you up here?” he asked.

Her lunge took him by surprise. He fell heavily backward, Millie thudding on top of him. With her hands held behind her back, she tried to hit him with her head. He shoved her away roughly and scrambled to his feet.

“He was trying to rescue me,” she said, her voice twisted by grief and rage.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Shaun’s confusion was settling into his stomach as an ache and an anger.
He
had rescued this girl, goddammit. She should at least show him some gratitude. Not try to club him unconscious with her skull. “You were the one who knocked him on his ass when he came through the door! Don’t tell me that’s how you get rescued.”

She pressed her cheek flat on the floor. Tears ran over her nose and dripped onto the wood. “He hid his face,” she said more quietly. “He hid his face and he had a knife and I didn’t recognize him.”

“Yeah? Well, when a masked man with a knife comes after you, it doesn’t commonly mean that he’s here to save you.” He strode to the backpack lying near the door. It was the same one van der Hoeven had been carrying earlier. “Let’s just see what he had in store for you, shall we?” He unzipped the bag and upended it.

A Thermos fell out, clanging dully on the wooden floor. Two sandwiches followed. An apple rolled out, landing on the sandwiches. He shook it again, numbly, and a roll of toilet paper bounced to the floor. A slim thermal blanket slithered out after it.

Shaun stared at the young woman sprawled on the floor. She looked at the food and supplies, then at him. “You killed my brother,” she said.

He backed out of the room and slammed the door. The key. The key. He scrabbled around the base of the stairs where he had seen the thing fall. When his hand closed over it, he sagged with relief before turning to the door and locking it. He pocketed the key, and then, without being conscious of descending, he was outside the tower.

It was the same day it had been when he went inside. The sun had hardly budged in the sky. The trees, the ruined house, the forest closing in all around—it was all the same as when he set foot in the tower.

Except that he had killed a man.

Okay. He wasn’t going to panic.

He was a smart man. He was going to figure out what to do, and in what order to do it. He tried on the idea of heading for his house and calling the police. Who would then arrive and take Millie van der Hoeven’s statement that he had killed her brother before locking her in a tower room. No.

He considered calling his lawyer first. No, calling his lawyer and getting her to give him the name of a good criminal attorney. Who would stand beside him when the police asked him how Eugene van der Hoeven had toppled from the tower. And why he had shut the man’s sister up instead of freeing her, as any innocent person would have done. Oh, yes, having an attorney there would certainly reassure the police that Eugene’s death had been an accident.

Hadn’t it?

He thought about that moment, about van der Hoeven’s expression, about the rage and frustration that had been coursing through his body, pounding in his head. He sucked in a breath. Of course it had been an accident. He had no motive to wish van der Hoeven dead. Not one.

Of course, now he knew for sure that one of the three owners of Haudenosaunee wasn’t going to be signing anything over to GWP tonight.

And the second of the three owners was trapped in a tower. No one knew she was there. Except Shaun.

What if Millie van der Hoeven didn’t show up for the ceremony tonight? The sale of the land would be, if not voided, at least delayed. Eugene’s estate would have to be settled. There would be time for Shaun to unearth alternate financing. Buy back-stock. Maybe tender his offer of partnership to Louisa van der Hoeven.

Admittedly, she wouldn’t be likely to be receptive if he had been arrested for her brother’s death in the interim. But he could cross that bridge when he came to it.

Meanwhile, his thoughts circled around to tonight’s ceremony. To Millie van der Hoeven. The person who had walked into the tower, the man who hadn’t ever caused anyone’s death, was horrified.
What are you thinking of? Just keeping her
?

The old nursery rhyme sang in his head.
Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater. Had a wife and couldn’t keep her. Put her in a pumpkin shell
. He looked up at the tower.
And there he kept her very well
.

He was thinking what to do with the body as he walked around the tower. He wasn’t cocky, but he was rather pleased by his composure and rationality—until he stepped around a birch tree and finally saw Eugene van der Hoeven up close. There was something
wrong
about the way Eugene’s limbs lay. As if he were a mannequin put together in a hurry. Or a marionette doll flung aside by a careless child. Shaun started shaking. His breath sawed in and out, too fast, until black spots swam in front of his eyes. Eugene wasn’t a person anymore; he was a broken
thing
. And Shaun had done it to him.

He bent over and lost his lunch.

He staggered back around the base of the tower until the corpse was out of sight. He bent over, breathing deeply, willing the light-headed, spots-in-front-of-his-eyes feeling to go away.
Okay
, he thought.
Okay. Eugene is dead
. He was not going to touch Eugene. But he had Millie. He had to see the opportunity in it. Everything was an opportunity, if you were gutsy enough to take it. He would get Millie out of the tower, take her… someplace. A motel. The van der Hoevens don’t show at the signing ceremony tonight. Haudenosaunee keeps producing cheap pulpwood for Reid-Gruyn.

And what do you do with her after
? the old Shaun asked. But the new Shaun, the one who was going to come out a winner in this debacle, was already figuring how he could get a vengeful, uncooperative Rapunzel out of her tower.

He would need something to carry her in. He flashed back to the garage, talking with Eugene, the garden cart in the third bay. Perfect.

The walk back to the drive passed in a blur. There were the trees, the still-green grass, the dead hydrangeas, and then he was standing in front of the garage, thankful, now, for van der Hoeven’s out-of-date, manually opened doors. He hauled up the far door. There it was, the garden cart, stored against the coming winter. Rectangular, with metal-bound wooden sides, it was big enough to hold a grown woman, if she curled up.

He rolled it over the gravel, past the edge of the house, along the broad part of the trail. He could see the stone wall enclosing the back lawn and the mellow, peeled logs of the house’s rear facade. He was just swinging the cart onto the edge of the trail to the old camp when he heard it. The crunch of tires on gravel. He shoved the cart ahead hurriedly, only to stumble in its wake and nearly fall.

A door slammed. He froze in place. He heard the sound of footsteps, gritting over the gravel, thumping on the wooden porch. There was a pause, as if the unseen visitor had rung the bell and was waiting.

Shaun took a deep, silent breath.

“Hello!” a voice called. “Anyone home?”

1:20 P.M.

Randy had his excuse for being on Fire Road 52 all ready. The Haudenosaunee entrance was marked only by stone pillars and was easy to miss if you weren’t paying attention. He was on his way to pick up his wife. He was absentminded. He thought this was the road. Who could argue with that?

Of course, he hoped there wouldn’t be anyone to argue with at all. He slowed as he approached the entrance to the logging road. No sign of any activity. He signaled, then turned in. Was she there? Undiscovered? Should he risk going on? He accelerated gently, rolling uphill. Just a guy out to pick up his wife. That’s all. He rounded a bend.

He almost hit the red pickup parked in the middle of the road. He jammed on his brakes, the slight shuddering stop making his stomach swoop as if he were on a roller coaster. Past the truck, he could see—oh, shit—a cop car. No ambulance, no hearse, no sign of
her
. He didn’t see anybody. He worried his lip. Should he back out? Would that look more or less suspicious than getting out and taking a look-see? He sat in the driver’s seat, paralyzed by his options, until a man in hunter’s camos and a blaze-orange vest wrenched through the thicket of brush lining the road and walked toward him.

A hunter. He started to smile in relief, until the man looked at Mike’s license plate. Looked at the tires. As he approached Randy, the man ambled wide of the car, in a path that might have been dictated by a rut in the dirt road but that also placed him in a position where he could see what was coming at him if Randy opened the door. He took off his cap, and that was when Randy saw it was the chief of police.

Russ Van Alstyne smiled and motioned for him to crank down his window. The handle stuck at each rotation, and the resulting squeak of glass on rubber sounded like a chorus in Randy’s ears:
You’re screwed, you’re screwed, you’re screwed
.

“Hey, son,” the chief said. “What’re you doing out here?”

Randy blanked. What was he doing out here? He was… he was… “Looking for my wife,” he said.

Van Alstyne’s blue eyes sharpened. “When was the last time you saw her?”

Oh, shit. The chief thought he meant Becky Castle. Probably had him tagged as a wife beater. Randy shook his head. “She works up to Haudenosaunee. Cleans house for them. Our car’s in the shop, so I had to come get her.”

“Cleans house for Eugene van der Hoeven? I think I met her this morning.” Van Alstyne stepped closer and peered into the window. “I know you,” he said. “You’re Mark Durkee’s brother-in-law, right? Schoof? Randy Schoof?”

Randy nodded. If being Mark’s relation by marriage saved him, he would hug the self-righteous prick the next time he saw him.

“So you’re looking for your wife, Randy?” The chief’s voice was relaxed, friendly. His eyes, however, were as bright as ever, his glance flickering from the backseat to the passenger side to the well beside the door to Randy’s clothes. “What’s that on your pants, there?”